Chapter 6: The Alpha’s Protection

Logan’s POV 

I didn’t even realize when my wolf had pushed his way to the surface.

His eyes were mine now, gold and burning, the line between us so thin I could barely tell where he ended and I began anymore. 

I let out a growl low in my chest, and the sound of it dropped the whole hallway into silence. Bianca and her little group of friends froze where they stood, the laughter dying in their throats.

Bianca coughed and pasted a soft smile on her face like she had not been laughing two seconds ago.

“What the hell is going on here?” My voice came out rough, scraped, barely my own.

“Oh, Logan, it’s nothing.” She tucked a strand 

of hair behind her ear, that smile growing sweeter, like it could fool anyone. “We were just welcoming the new girl. You know. Your sister.”

“Welcoming?” I took a step closer. “You mean making her cry?”

Bianca’s smile faltered for half a second, then she fixed it back into place. 

She started walking toward me slowly, flipping her hair over one shoulder, putting on the kind of show that was supposed to make a man forget he was angry.

I had to give her credit. It was almost impressive.

She was a beta wolf, and beta females were always like this. Aggressive about what they wanted, openly possessive, never quite knowing when to back off. 

Bianca had set her sights on me for as long as I could remember, picking fights with any other girl who came too close, marking her territory in a thousand little ways even though I had never given her permission to.

It had never mattered to me. My wolf had never recognized anyone, not in all my life. 

So I had taken her to bed once, maybe twice, and gotten bored of her by the next morning the way I got bored of all of them.

But the Canadian was different.

My wolf had known her the second she walked through our front door. He had not stopped pacing since. I could not sleep without seeing her face. 

I could not breathe in our house without catching her scent in the hall and feeling my whole chest tighten around it. 

And I hated her for it. I hated every single thing she was doing to me, hated that some bone-deep part of me knew with absolute certainty that she was not good for our pack and I still could not bring myself to let her go.

I could not even take her off my mind for one hour.

“Logan.” Bianca’s hand landed on my arm, soft and possessive, and her voice dropped to something she probably thought was tender. 

“Why are you so worked up over her? Come on.”

I moved before I thought about it.

My arm came up and I swept hers off me with so much force that her whole body went with it. 

She hit the lockers behind her hard enough that the metal cracked, and she slid down to the floor with a thin line of blood already running from her hairline down the side of her face.

She looked up at me with her eyes wide, then they began to shift, turning a bright yellow as her own wolf came snarling to the surface.

I let mine answer her wolf.

The growl that came out of me was something I had never made before. Deep, ugly, and so loud the walls seemed to shake with it. Bianca’s wolf eyes blinked out almost immediately. 

She flinched against the lockers, and the next sound out of her was a whine, high and frightened, and then she burst into tears, both hands coming up to cover her face.

Her little group of friends scattered like leaves.

I turned and walked away without looking at her again.

I could feel every eye in that hallway following me, the whispers already starting up before I had even cleared the corner. 

The Pierce heir had just put a beta girl into the lockers. The Pierce heir had just defended someone. 

Logan Pierce, who had never raised a hand for anyone in his entire life, who had never stood between a single soul and their consequences, had just shown the whole school where his loyalty had gone.

Let them whisper.

I had never lifted a finger for anyone before because no one had ever been worth it. 

That was the simple truth of it. And I did not care what story they made of this, because as far as I was concerned, the rule from this day forward was very simple.

No one was allowed to hurt her.

No one except me.

I made it halfway down the next corridor before I caught her scent again, sharper now, wet with tears, and I followed it without meaning to. 

I told myself I only wanted to make sure she was alright. I told myself I only wanted to see her face and then I would leave.

I rounded the last corner and stopped dead.

Lucas was already there.

He was crouched in front of her, one hand cupping her cheek, his thumb wiping a tear off her face with so much gentleness it did not even look like him. 

She was leaning into the touch without meaning to. Her eyes were closed, and her lashes were dark and wet against her skin, and she was letting my brother hold her like she had been waiting for someone to do exactly that.

“I’m here,” he was saying, low and soft. “Hey. You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

I could not move.

I stood there at the edge of the corridor like a man who had been struck in the chest, watching my brother do the thing I did not know how to do. 

Touching her the way I would never let myself. Saying the words I could not get out of my mouth even when I was alone in my own room at night thinking about her.

He looked up.

His grey eyes met mine over the top of her head, and there was not a single expression on his face ,which made everything more uncomfortable for me.

She did not see me.

Her face was still pressed into his palm.

Something in my chest broke open and the wolf in me roared so loud I thought my skull would split.

I turned and ran.

I did not even make it to the doors. I shoved them open with my shoulder and stumbled out into the wet grass behind the building, and my body was already changing before I had decided to let it.

My bones cracked. My breath turned to a snarl. The world dropped down low and wide around me as I hit the ground on four legs and tore off into the trees at the edge of campus.

I ran until the school was a memory.

I ran until the air burned in my lungs and the rain finally started to come down in earnest.

I ran until I could not feel her scent on me anymore, and even then, even then, my wolf was still snarling the same word over and over inside my chest, the one word I had been pretending all morning that I had not heard him say.

Mine.